Jerome karabel biography
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In my current project, I am particularly concerned with both the positive and negative consequences of American exceptionalism. I also plan to draw upon a growing body of social scientific literature that attempts to measure "quality of life" as well as a somewhat better developed literature on social indicators.My research will culminate in the publication of a book, now tentatively titled The America Way: How the United States is Different and Why It Matters.
"Towards a Theory of Intellectuals and Politics," Theory and Society 25, northern Power and Ideology in Education, co-edited with an introduction by Ampere-hour Halsey (Oxford University Press, 1977).
Jerome Karabel
Professional Affiliation
Professor of Sociology, University of California at Berkeley
Expert Bio
Over the course of my academic career, I have had a consistent interest in fundamental issues of stability and change in advanced societies.
One of its central goals is to produce a work that will assess, on the basis of systematic empirical evidence, how we are doing as a society in key domains of public policy. But my deepest hope is that, like some of the works of Seymour Martin Lipset (who was one of my mentors in graduate school and whose imprint on this project is obvious), it will be a book that will shed new light on the deeper character of the United States for readers both here and abroad.
Education
B.A.
My first treatment of this topic dealt with one particular aspect of the issue: why the United States, alone among the advanced capitalist societies, never developed a mass socialist movement. (Sociology) 1977, Harvard University
Experience
Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 1993-Present; Co-Director, Berkeley Project on Equal Opportunity, 1996-2004; Assistant to Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 1984-1993; Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator, Huron Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977-1984
Expertise
U.S.
Jerome Karabel
American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award
Jerome Karabel is an American sociologist, political and social commentator, and Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Who is Jerome Karabel?
Jerome Karabel is an American sociologist, political and social commentator, and Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.
My focus on the role of the educational system in legitimating the social order, the role of the university in distributing privilege; the growing importance of stratification within the system of higher education, and the politics of educational change. (Sociology) 1972, Harvard University; Ph.D. He is also co-author of The Diverted Dream: CommunityColleges and the Promise of EducationalOpportunity in America, 1900-1985, whichreceived the Outstanding Book Award from the AmericanEducationalResearch Association.
I have become especially interested in the important emergent field of studies on "subjective well-being," an area now dominated by psychologists and economists, but ripe for exploration by sociologists. As with my latest book, The Chosen, I hope to produce a work that, while grounded in rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, will appeal to a general as well as an academic audience.
Such starkly redefined measures of “merit” were institutionalized at these and other elite institutions over time, even as these schools later adapted such admission policies in response to growing demands for greater democratization and diversity during the mid and latter half of the twentieth century.
Karabel’s articles have been published in the American Sociological Review, Harvard Education Review, Theory and Society, Social Forces, and Politics and Society among others
He is also a contributor to publications such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
He has writtenextensively on Americaninstitutions of highereducation and on variousaspects of socialpolicy and history in the United States, often from a comparative perspective.
Karabel is the author of The Chosen: The HiddenHistory of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, whichreceived the DistinguishedScholarly Book Award from the AmericanSociological Association.
I have pursued these themes throughout my work on higher education, starting with a series of journal articles in the 1970's through The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America and culminating in The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (which received the 2007 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award of the American Sociological Association).Alongside this interest in education, I have had a long-standing interest in American exceptionalism – of the causes and consequences of the distinctive social, economic and political features of the United States.
Education
Harvard University.
Career
He has written extensively on American institutions of higher education and on various aspects of social policy and history in the United States, often from a comparative perspective. I am particularly interested in the role of "meritocracy" as a dominant belief system in the U.S., one that legitimates the existing social order.